PINCKNEY, MI - Talking with other boys each night before falling asleep in the bunk beds of their cabin, Keyoun Tuggle found he was more open with his fellow campers than some of his friends from school.

"We get to talk about things that normally we wouldn't talk about at home," said Tuggle, 15, of Detroit. "Just stuff that other people wouldn't normally understand, like how we deal with certain stuff at school, bullying and stuff like that. You have more to relate to with everyone else here."

The evening cabin chats are one of many team-building activities North Star Reach campers go through in their week-long stays.

Situated on 105 wooded acres between three lakes southwest of Pinckney, the camp is part of the SeriousFun Children's network. It is dedicated to giving children with serious medical conditions a typical summer camp experience and there is no cost to families to send their children there.

Tuggle and the other 7- to 15-year-old campers this past week all have sickle cell disease, but he said that fact doesn't come up much. Other weeks of camp at North Star Reach cater to youth who have had organ transplants, heart conditions or are the siblings of a child with a serious medical condition.

This is North Star Reach's second summer of operation and Tuggle's second year attending the camp. On Tuesday, July 25, he lined up with some friends at the archery station and shot arrows at a row of targets a few yards away. The boys playfully argued about how many push-ups they'd have to do if they weren't the first to shoot a water balloon hanging from a string between the targets.

Doug Armstrong, founder and CEO of North Star Reach, said he likes to see the sense of community that builds among campers and camp staff. He sees it most on display at the closing campfire each week, when campers are invited to take the stage of the outdoor amphitheater and sing, perform a skit or share another talent. Everyone is met with cheers of support, Armstrong said.

"Kids who have, for most of their lives, had things done for them and people being generous and feeling sorry for them and helping them out - suddenly they're in a position to recognize that there are other kids who need help even more," Armstrong said. "Those kids are jumping up to be the helpful ones in helping and supporting each other. It's just an amazing community of support that gets built."

From the lake access for fishing and kayaking to the giant treehouse and clusters of cabins tucked in the woods, North Star Reach is an ideal setting for making classic summer camp memories.

It also has a well-equipped medical center and medical professionals on staff to accommodate campers' unique needs. Although most of the time they treat scraped knees, poison ivy and homesickness, like any other camp nurse would, said Dr. Edward "Skip" Walton, medical director for North Star Reach.

"We obviously have a really beautiful health care center, but we're really happiest when the kids are not here. Our goal is to try to keep them in the game as much as possible," Walton said.

The campers are generally more active at camp than they would be at home, Walton said, and variations of each activity are offered for different ability levels, so the children can push themselves as much as they want.

Spending a week at North Star Reach this summer and last summer has been a great experience for Maya Dozier's two sons, Larryn Patton, 15, and Labruan Patton, 12.

"I really appreciate the opportunity that they put forth for these children to be able to do this because I think that it changes them in a positive way. ... It gives them some positivity within their disease," said Dozier, of Ypsilanti. "One of the top reasons they love it is because they can relate. They're all going through the same thing and they can talk about it freely without being shy or embarrassed."

Typically, Labruan and Larryn don't like for their friends or teachers to know they have an illness, Dozier said. Larryn has been struggling to accept the fact he'll never be able to play football, and Labruan doesn't like to have to take breaks when his friends can keep playing sports.

"Me as a parent, I try to make it so they can do things the same as the other kids," Dozier said. "The hardest part is telling them that they can't."

There's nothing stopping them from keeping up with the rest of the campers at North Star Reach.

Labruan spent plenty of time last week on the camp's basketball courts. He said archery was his favorite activity last year, and he was excited for the new outdoor pool North Star Reach opened this summer. The pool is heated, so children with sickle cell can swim without fearing the painful episodes brought on by temperature changes.

Mike "Coach" Parker spent some time playing basketball with Labruan on Wednesday afternoon. The 26-year-old Detroit resident does fundraising work for the University of Michigan, and he's taken vacation time the past couple of summers to volunteer as a counselor or unit leader at North Star Reach.

Parker said he enjoys seeing the campers' personal growth during the week of camp.

"They go from shy, more reserved to outgoing, laughing, having fun," he said. "It's just seeing them conquer some things they didn't think possible, experience some things they didn't think possible and enjoy what camp can bring for them."

Camille Lonzer, 15, of Chicago, also values the friendships she made at North Star Reach last summer, and she reunited with some of them at the camp this summer.

"I made a lot of friendships here that I wanted to see again, and I also liked the community and the counselors here. You know, they try to make camp fun," she said.

Lonzer said her favorite parts of the week were arts and crafts activities and creating a podcast in the "Story Studio," a place where campers can use recording equipment to do storytelling of books they read aloud or programs they write themselves.

Like Tuggle, Lonzer said sickle cell disease - the thing all the campers have in common - fades to the background when they're at North Star Reach.

"It's out of the conversation," she said. "Fun is more in the conversation than sickle cell is. ... It's not really talked about that often, and I appreciate that."